March 20, 2018

I Was Anastasia

By: Ariel Lawhon

Release Date: March 20, 2018

Russia, July 17, 1918: Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police force Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia where they face a merciless firing squad. None survive. At least that is what the executioners have always claimed. Germany, February 17, 1920: A young woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to Anastasia Romanov is pulled shivering and senseless from a canal. Refusing to explain her presence in the freezing water, she is taken to the hospital where an examination reveals that her body is riddled with countless, horrific scars. When she finally does speak, this frightened, mysterious woman claims to be the Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia. Her detractors, convinced that the young woman is only after the immense Romanov fortune, insist on calling her by a different name: Anna Anderson. As rumors begin to circulate through European society that the youngest Romanov daughter has survived the massacre, old enemies and new threats are awakened. With a brilliantly crafted dual narrative structure, Lawhon wades into the most psychologically complex and emotionally compelling territory: the nature of identity itself. The question of who Anna Anderson is and what actually happened to Anastasia Romanov creates a saga that spans fifty years and touches three continents. This thrilling story is every bit as moving and momentous as it is harrowing and twisted.

I've been drawn to the whole Tzar Nicholas II massacre for almost 20 years. I came into this book with a fairly strong basis of the whole Anastasia/Anna Anderson debate. I knew the facts. I knew the timelines. I knew a lot of the details behind everything. While I didn't read this book with a blank slate for the author to fill, I still was putty in the author's hands. It didn't take me long to be swept up in the dueling stories. Just as I knew so much. I also learned so much.

Ariel Lawhon had the difficult job of telling a complex story that was once a well known debate. A debate that, for some, still lives on. She handled this task with great respect and creativity. She made a real life story from many, many years ago feel relevant and current. She doesn't give much away as she tells the story from Anna's point of view. She writes her whole side of the story with a compassion and dignity that few ever thought to have.

She rotates the reader between Anna's story and Anastasia's. Event by event, you relive the family's imprisonments, treatment, and ultimate deaths. I found myself, once again, hoping and praying what I knew would happen wouldn't. You become a fly on the wall for disgusting acts of hatred and violence. By the time the family meets their end, you are sick with anger and disgust. But you will also never forget Anastasia, or her family.

Readers will be sucked into these two lives and the events within them from the first page. You will ride every roller coaster along with the characters. I have no doubt this book is destined for the bestseller lists. You will be a tangled mess of emotions by the time you read the author's note. As Ariel Lawhon tells you what was fact verses fiction, that ball of emotion will only increase. Several things you desperately want to be fiction are not. I Was Anastasia is a book that will stay with you long after you have closed the book.

January 9, 2018

The English Wife

By: Lauren Willig

384 Pages

Description:

Annabelle and Bayard Van Duyvil live a charmed life in New York: he’s the scion of an old Knickerbocker family, she grew up in a Tudor house in England, they had a fairytale romance in London, they have three-year-old twins on whom they dote, and he’s recreated her family home on the banks of the Hudson and named it Illyria. Yes, there are rumors that she’s having an affair with the architect, but rumors are rumors and people will gossip. But then Bayard is found dead with a knife in his chest on the night of their Twelfth Night Ball, Annabelle goes missing, presumed drowned, and the papers go mad. Bay’s sister, Janie, forms an unlikely alliance with a reporter to try to uncover the truth, convinced that Bay would never have killed his wife, that it must be a third party, but the more she learns about her brother and his wife, the more everything she thought she knew about them starts to unravel. Who were her brother and his wife, really? And why did her brother die with the name George on his lips?

I've been a fan of Lauren Willig since the days of her Pink Carnation series. She has always weaved together fascinating stories that pull you in and keep hold of you until the very last word. The English Wife is no exception. Once again, she has written a story that captivates the reader while sending them on a journey.

Every chapter of this book offered up another piece to the puzzle being put together. So many questions seeking answers that you get to search for, along with the characters. You step into the world that Bayard and Annabelle created. You're there for their first meeting. You watch as they fall in love and form a life. In fact, you're cheering them on as they do. And you are baffled when one is found dead and the other is missing. You have as many questions as the characters do.

You bond with Janie as she decides to boldly seek the truth of what happened to her brother and his wife- no matter what the truth turns out to be. You are baffled with every clue that is uncovered, and you try to make the many pieces fit.

The English Wife will set you on a course to uncover the truth you never knew was hidden. And, like me, you will be gripped with every clue you find as you try to put the puzzle together.

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